Photos-Video: Boston $15 An Hour WageAction Protest-4/ 14/ 2015
by Michael Borkson for Boston Indymedia Email: nosanctions (nospam) yahoo.com	15 Apr 2015
Boston, Mass.-April 14, 2015: About 4000 protesters held a rally and march through downtown Boston to demand at least $15 an hour wage for fast food and other underpaid workers.
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Boston, Mass.-April 14, 2015: About 4000 protesters held a rally and march through downtown Boston to demand at least $15 an hour wage for fast food and other underpaid workers. It was a very well organized protest starting with a rally at Forsyth Park near Northeastern Univ. then marching through downtown Boston with stops at some notorious corporations which underpay their workers such as McDonalds and AMC Loews Theater. Also, the march grew. As the march proceeded down Boylston St., coming up the other way was the Second Line Social and Pleasure Society Marching Band ( Honk activist band). They met head on at Berkeley St. Also on that corner were some giant puppets joining in as well. It became a whole lot louder and even festive. Several buses brought in protesters from around the state. Organized by www.wageaction.org #WAGEACTION #FIGHTFOR15 Links to photos and video I took-- Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/protestphotos1/sets/72157651510570327/ Video: https://youtu.be/ivMcXorAOkA
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In Honor Of Russian Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s Birthday (April 1870-Janaury 1924)-The Struggle Continues-Ivan Smilga’s Political Journey-Take One     

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman 

 

For a number of years I have been honoring various revolutionary forbears, including the subject of this birthday tribute, the Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin architect (along with fellow revolutionary Leon Trotsky) of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 in each January under the headline-Honor The Three L’s –Lenin, Luxemburg , Liebknecht. My purpose then was (and still is) to continue the traditions established by the Communist International in the early post-World War I period in honoring revolutionary forbears. That month has special significance since every January  

Leftists honor those three leading revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in his sleep after a long illness in 1924, and Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered in separate incidents after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin.

 

I have made my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in which he eventually wound up in prison only to be released when the Kaiser abdicated (correctly went to jail when it came down to it once the government pulled the hammer down on his opposition), on some previous occasions. The key point to be taken away today, still applicable today as in America we are in the age of endless war, endless war appropriations and seemingly endless desires to racket up another war out of whole cloth every change some ill-begotten administration decides it needs to “show the colors”, one hundred years later in that still lonely and frustrating struggle to get politicians to oppose war budgets, to risk prison to choke off the flow of war materials.  

 

I have also made some special point in previous years about the life of Rosa Luxemburg, the “rose of the revolution.” About her always opposing the tendencies in her adopted party, the German Social-Democracy, toward reform and accommodation, her struggle to make her Polish party ready for revolutionary opportunities, her important contributions to Marxist theory and her willing to face and go to jail when she opposed the first World War.

 

This month, the month of his birth, it is appropriate, at a time when the young needs to find, and are in desperate need of a few good heroes, a few revolutionaries who contributed to both our theoretical understandings about the tasks of the international working class in the age of imperialism (the age, unfortunately, that we are still mired in) and to the importance of the organization question in the struggle for revolutionary power, to highlight the  struggles of Vladimir Lenin, the third L, in order to define himself politically.

 

Below is a first sketch written as part of a series posted over several days before Lenin’s birthday on the American Left History blog starting on April 16^th of a young fictional labor militant, although not so fictional in the scheme of the revolutionary developments in the Russia of the Tsar toward the end of the 19^th century and early 20^th century which will help define the problems facing the working-class there then, and the ones that Lenin had to get a handle on.

*******

Ivan Smilga, “Big Ivan” to his friends, called so since childhood in the rural neighborhood, really a village, where he grew up, and rightly so since he was large, six feet six and two hundred and sixty pounds. So large by Russian hunger standards in the winter of 1893 when he had come out of the Ukrainian farmlands, come out of the miniature hamlet of Vresk, not many miles outside of Odessa to Moscow when he had heard that John Smythe and Sons, the big English textile firm had been given a license by the Tsar, by the Ministry of Commerce, to set up a factory in that city to produce cloth for the home market.

The farm life had been so barren, so desolate, so worked out by his father and really by the farmer who had worked the land before and moved east, east toward Siberia where the frontier now lie ahead, that Ivan had walked on foot or taken a sleigh ride most of the way that hard winter in order to as he said (roughly and politely translated from the Russian although the English is almost too gentile for a what a rough-hewn peasant boy not civilized by city ways and what Miss Primrose’s etiquette books would tolerate would thunder when riled) “get the stink of country life blown out of his nostrils.” He was not alone on that first day when the first Smythe plant went on line. Thousands of young farm boy Ivans (although perhaps none quite as large) were standing impatiently in line in front of the main office building for a chance at employment. And more than one farm boy was crestfallen to see that if he had to compete against thousands of Ivans there were that many more thousands of Ivanas, young farm girls, girls as always attracted to textile work in every budding capitalist country in order to get off their own desolate family farms and make their ways in the world before marriage. (Ivan would later find, find out among a lot of things that the idyll textile dewy-eyed factory girl of British and American legend was just that, a legend but that did not stop them or later generations from coming when they heard the spindles roaring). Although perhaps they would be too polite and pious to use the words that Ivan used to indicate his reasoning for getting off the land, and not look back.                

Fortunately Ivan, with his bulk and strength, was chosen very quickly by a savvy watchful Russian foreman who knew what he needed and it was staring him right in the eye, needed the strong back and mitt-like hands of a young man who could lift the rolls of fabric and balance then on his back as they came off the machines. And so Ivan started his new life, or part of his new life as a working-man, as a man of the city. For about a year things went well, although he worked many long sixteen hour days six days a week being young he was capable of doing the work. And loved to pocket his wages at the end of the week (extra wages, a few kopeks more, as it turned out later since that foreman had told the English superintendent that Ivan was something of a superman. Moreover he had the grudging respect of other men (and the eye of a few of the girl operators) so it was best to piece him off before he found out about trade unions and such. Nice maneuver, divide and conquer right on the factory floor). Being somewhat frugal (as he had been taught in the peasant manner) Ivan was able to save for his dream of owning a small shop, maybe a blacksmith’s shop, to service the needs of the fine horses that he saw daily on the streets of Moscow. Ivan also sent, as a dutiful son, kopeks home to his family to help tide them over as the grain harvest that year was sufficiently short to bring the threat of severe hunger, maybe famine it was not unheard of , back to the Smilga door once again.

In the spring of 1895 all that changed though. Ivan had worked his way up to head hauler, directing others to load and unload the rolls of fabric produced from the never-ending machines. He had a good reputation among his fellow workers, although not a few saw his dreams of a little shop as somewhat awry (but who would dare tell Ivan Smilga, even later the hardest toughest street Bolshevik from Georgia, he could not have his dream this side of paradise). Moreover he was a moderate drinker by Russian and Ukrainian standards, no more than a bottle at ta sitting, and so the young women of the factory floor would flirt, or at least cast an eye his way, especially Elena Kassova, who worked one of the machines which Ivan was in charge of keeping up to speed by rapidly get the rolls off the end of the line. Then one day James Smiley, the company owner’s son and manager of the plant announced to young Ivan Smilga that his services (and that of the crew who worked under him) were no longer necessary since the company had purchased a machine that would automatically take the rolls from the machine and place them on a wagon, a wagon so simple to operate that one of the girl machine-tenders could do it periodically as needed while still tending her machine.  

So there Ivan was, out in the cold, without a job, and with no particular prospects. Ivan stewed over his plight for about a week, maybe ten days, with solace only from uncharacteristic endless bottles of vodka. Then one night he rounded up his now unemployed work crew, a group of four young farm boys who like Ivan did not want to go home to that desolate farm land, and explained to them his plan to get his and their jobs back. Of course each crew member had also sought solace in the bottle and so collectively their minds may not have been quite as sharp as they should have been when Ivan unfolded his scheme. To hear Ivan tell the story the plan was simplicity itself. They would sneak into the factory on Saturday night when the machines were shut down and smash that hauling machine to smithereens. Then the Smileys, father and son, would have to hire them back, maybe give them higher wages to boot.

 

Needless to say greedy for work and plied with liquor the crew bought into the plan with every hand and foot. That very next Saturday night they pulled off the caper. Snuck into the factory undetected by a dozing night watchman to do their nefarious work (that night watchman, Orlov, would subsequently be fired for being drunk and asleep on the job and Ivan would not see him again until he saw him on the barricades in Moscow when the Bolsheviks were trying to subdue the local branch of the Provisional Government after November 1917). All day Sunday the working-class quarters of Moscow were abuzz with the news, spread by the night watchman Orlov who claimed he had been knocked out by whoever did the dastardly deed, that parties unknown had smashed the machinery. There were newspaper reports that the culprits would be momentarily apprehended. That the “Luddites” would be captured and dealt with summarily. (Nobody knew exactly what a Luddite was but they all knew it could not be good to be one, or, worse, accused of being one) Of course they never were. On the other hand come that Monday morning as Ivan and the crew waited around in front of the factory doors expecting to be re-hired coming up the road on a horse-drawn wooden flatbed carriage was an exact replica of the machinery destroyed the previous Saturday night.            

Free Chelsea Manning-President Obama Pardon Chelsea Now! 

 

 

Support "Courage To Resist"-The Organization Supporting Military Resisters And Chelsea Manning 

 



Frank Jackman comment on Courage To Resist and military resisters: 

I have always admired military resisters having, frankly, done my time in the military, Vietnam Era time, without any serious reflection about the military, my role in the military, or what was just and unjust about that war until after I got out. After I got out, began to see thing through the fog of war and got serious “religion” on the questions of war and peace from several sources. At first working with the Cambridge Quakers who I had noticed around the fringes of anti-war GI work in the early 1970s when there was a serious basis for doing such work as the American army one way or another was half in mutiny toward the end of American involvement in that war. And a serious need as guys, guys who get their “religion” in the service needed civilian help to survive the military maze that they were trying to fight. This connection with the Quakers had been made shortly after I got out of the service when my doubts crept in about what I had done in the service, and why I had let myself be drafted when I had expressed serious anti-war doubts before induction about what the American government was doing in Vietnam to its own soldiers. But, more importantly, and this was the real beginning of wisdom and something I am keenly aware every time the American government ratchets up the war hysteria for its latest adventure, to the Vietnamese who to paraphrase the great boxer Mohammed Ali (then Cassius Clay) had never done anything to me, never posed any threat to me and mine. But as much as I admired the Quakers and their simple peace witness, occasionally attended their service and briefly had a Quaker girlfriend, I was always a little jumpy around them, my problem not theirs, since their brand of conscientious objection to all wars was much broader than my belief in just and unjust wars.

Later I worked with a couple of anti-war collectives that concentrated on anti-war GI work among active GIs through the vehicle of coffeehouses located near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and Fort Dix down in New Jersey. That work while satisfying and rewarding by actually working with guys who knew the score, knew the score from the inside, and had plenty to tell, especially those who had gotten “religion” under fire was short-lived once American on the ground involvement in Vietnam was minimalized and the horrific draft was abolished as a means of grabbing “cannon fodder” for the damn war. Once the threat of being sent to Vietnam diminished the soldiers drifted off and the anti-war cadre that held things together as well.

What really drove the issue of military resistance home to me though, what caused some red-faced shame was something that I did not find out about until well after my own military service was over. A few years later when I went back to my hometown on some family-related business I found out after meeting him on the street coming out of a local supermarket that my best friend from high school, Sean Kiley, had been a military resister, had refused to go to Vietnam, and had served about two years in various Army stockades for his efforts. Had done his “duty” as he saw it. Had earned his “anti-war” colors the hard way.    

See Sean like me, like a lot of working-class kids from places like our hometown, Gloversville, up in Massachusetts, maybe had a few doubts about the war but had no way to figure out what to do and let himself be drafted for that very reason. What would a small town boy whose citizens supported the Vietnam War long after it made even a smidgen of sense, whose own parents were fervent “hawks,” whose older brother had won the DSC in Vietnam, and whose contemporaries including me did their service without a public murmur know of how to maneuver against the American military monster machine. But what Sean saw early on, from about day three of basis training, told him he had made a big error, that his grandmother who grew up in Boston and had been an old Dorothy Day Catholic Worker supporter had been right that there was no right reason for him to be in that war. And so when he could, after receiving orders for Vietnam, he refused to go (I will tell you more of the details some time when I ask him some questions about events that I have forgotten) and did his time in the military that way.          

Sean’s story, and in a sense my belated story, are enough reasons to support Courage to Resist since, unfortunately, there are today very few organizations dedicated to providing informational, legal, and social support for the military resisters of the heinous onslaughts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization needs the help of every ex-soldier who got “religion,” of every anti-war activist, and of every honest citizen who realizes, now more than ever, that the short way to end the endless wars of this generation is to get to the soldiers, get to the cadre on the ground fighting the damn wars. Enough said.     

Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning

To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me. (A decision upheld by the Convening Officer of the First District, General Buchanan in early 2014. The defense team is now preparing a full-blown brief to be presented to Army Court Of Military Appeals when ready.)

Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include: 
*that Private Manning  was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”

*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.

*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.

*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.

*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!

Signature ___________________________________________________________

Print Name __________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________

City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

 

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 

Public Meeting Tomorrow Night at 6:30 Next Steps for the Campaign Looking for how to get involved in the Fight for 15 after the Wage Action Boston National Day of Action on Tuesday? Come out tomorrow evening for what could be the last 15 Now Northeastern meeting of the year, a public discussion on our referendum victory and what the next steps are going to be for over the summer and next Fall.  JOIN US TOMORROW NIGHT AT 6:30 PM AT DODGE HALL ROOM 450 There will be students from Northeastern, Simmons College, Bunker Hill Community College, Boston College, Berklee College of Music, Boston University, UMass Boston, Tufts and more!  You won't want to miss this opportunity to discuss with students at other schools how we can grow this movement.  We hope to see you there! Facebook Event Page https://www.facebook.com/events/1641974182691505/

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May Day In Boston-The Fight For Workers' Rights Continues  

Primero de mayo en Boston-La Lucha Continua 

 

May Day In Boston-The Fight For Workers' Rights Continues  

 

President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!-The Struggle Continues ….We Will Not Leave Our Sister Behind

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

A while back, maybe a year or so ago, I was asked by a fellow member of Veterans For Peace at a monthly meeting about the status of the case of Chelsea Manning since he knew that I had been seriously involved with publicizing her case and he had not heard much about the case since she had been convicted in August 2013 (on some twenty counts including several Espionage Act counts) and sentenced by Judge Lind to thirty-five years imprisonment to be served at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. That had also been the time immediately after the sentencing when Private Manning announced to the world her true sexual identity and turned from Bradley to Chelsea.

I responded to my fellow member that, as usual in such super-charged cases involving political prisoners, once the media glare of the trial and sentencing is over the case usually fell by the wayside into the media vacuum while the appellate process proceed on over the next several years. At that point I informed him of the details that I did know to that point. Chelsea immediately after sentencing had been put in the normal isolation before being put in with the general population at Fort Leavenworth. She seemed to be adjusting according to her lawyer to the pall of prison life as best she could. Later she had gone to a Kansas civil court to have her name changed from Bradley to Chelsea Elizabeth which the judge granted although the Army for a period insisted that mail be sent to her under her former male Bradley name. Her request for hormone therapies to help reflect her real sexual identity had either been denied or the process stonewalled despite the Army’s own medical and psychiatric personnel stating in court that she was entitled to such measures. At the beginning of 2014 the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, General Buchanan, who had the authority to grant clemency on the sentence part of the case, despite the unusual severity of the sentence, had denied Chelsea any relief from the onerous sentence imposed by Judge Lind. Locally on Veterans Day 2013 we honored Chelsea at the annual VFP Armistice Day program and in December 2013 held a stand-out celebrating Chelsea’s birthday (as we did in December 2014).  Most important of the information I gave my fellow VFPer was that Chelsea’s case going forward to the Army appellate process was being handled by nationally renowned lawyer Nancy Hollander and her associate Vincent Ward. Thus the case was in the long drawn out legal phase that does not generally get much coverage except by those interested in the case like well-known Vietnam era Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, various progressive groups which either nominated or rewarded her with their prizes, and the organization that has steadfastly continued to handle her case’s publicity and raising financial aid for her appeal, Courage to Resist (an organization dedicated to publicizing the cases of other military resisters as well.   

At last month’s meeting (February 2015) that same VFPer asked me if it was true that as he had heard the Army, or the Department of Defense, had ordered Chelsea’s hormone therapy treatments to begin. I informed him after a long battle, including an ACLU suit ordering such relief, that information was true and she had started her treatments a month previously. I also informed him that the Army had thus far refused her request to have an appropriate length woman’s hair-do. On the legal front the case was still be reviewed for issues to be presented which could overturn the lower court decision in the Army Court Of Appeals by the lawyers and the actual writing of the appeal was upcoming. A seemingly small but very important victory on that front was that after the seemingly inevitable stonewalling on every issue the Army had agreed to use feminine or neutral pronoun in any documentation. They had last June also been successful in avoiding the attempt by the Department of Defense to place Chelsea in a civil facility as they tried to foist their “problem” elsewhere.

On the political front Chelsea continued to receive awards, and after a fierce battle in 2013 was finally in 2014 made an honorary grand marshal of the very important GLBTQ Pride Parade in San Francisco. Recently she has been given status as a contributor to the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper that was central to the fight by fellow whistle-blower Edward Snowden, where her first contribution was a very appropriate piece on what the fate of the notorious CIA torturers should be, having face such torture down in Quantico added to the poignancy of that suggestion.  Locally over the past year we have marched for Chelsea in the Boston Gay Pride Parade, commemorated her fourth year in prison last May with a vigil, honored her again on Armistice Day, celebrated her 27^th birthday in December with a rally, and continue to urge one and all to sign the on-line Amnesty International petition asking President Obama to grant an immediate pardon as well as asking that those with the means sent financial contributions to Courage To Resist to help with her legal expenses.

After I got home that night of the meeting I began thinking that a lot has happened over the past year and one half in the Chelsea Manning case and that I should made what I know more generally available to more than my local VFPers. Just one more example of our fervent belief that as we have said all along we will not leave our sister behind…              

 

The Many Faces Of Struggle In Boston -The Mother's March For Peace In The Streets 

 

The Fight For $15 Continues In Boston

 

A View From The Left-The Struggle Continues-Fight For $15

 

The Struggle For Black Liberation Continues In Boston

No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues 

A lot of people, and I count myself among them, see the new movement against police brutality and their incessant surveillance of minority youth, mainly black and Latino, that seems to be building up a head of steam to be the next major axis of struggle. The endemic injustices are so obvious and frankly so outrageous that the pent-up anger at the base of society among we the have-nots is so great that it needed visible expression. The past six months have given us that. Read on:

 

       

Free All The Class-War Prisoners-The Latest News From The Partisan Defense Committee   

 

Taking The “A” Train-With Jazzman Duke Ellington

 

 

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

There was King Oliver, there was Count (Basie), there was Earl (“Fatah” Hines), there was Marquis Dubois and, of course, there was the Duke, Duke Ellington. The old time jazz guys, the guys who came of jazz age out of the blues mostly, were fond of playing the royalty game (and within jazz if not out in Mister James Crow’s Southern world where a lot of them hailed from, as did their blues brothers, they were royalty, worthy royalty and more royalty worthy than those to the manor born. But the Duke is a special case, a special case of the old time jazz guys since he laid down some very, very sweet high notes in a long career (help lyrically by Billy Strayhorn especially), brought a ton of guys (Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges to name just two) along to wail the night away. If he was not the father of be-bop for that would be a little off-key then he had been the step-father of those cool post-World War II 1950s guys who blew so cool, so Charley, so Dizzy, so Monkish, searching for their own high white notes blowing out into some foggy bay, some sultry Harlem River drift night, some Frisco blow it out to the Japan seas. And so you could see the progression when the “beat” brothers (and they were mostly brethren) put their words to paper, put their words to sound they floated out on that dank Harlem River and Frisco bay Japan seas in their own high white note fashion. Listen to Allen howl, Gregory Corso machine gun his verse, Gary Snyder Zen away, Lawrence Ferlingetti screed along and see if you don’t hear echoes of Duke’s tone poems to stand your hair on edge.                         

Yeah, sure, the guy who hipped me to jazz way back when, back in Harvard Square coffeehouse days like he did with a few other corner boys like Jack Dawson, Sam Lowell said that I had come late to an appreciation of jazz, had got my dander up messing around with the great rock and roll jail break-out and subsequently the long gone daddy folk minute and so those be-bop cats that animated his young interests didn’t hit me until much later. Later when a max daddy like the Duke was already blowing big fluffy notes in the great beyond. But when I did “dig” Duke like with a lot of things that I get the flame over I grab whatever I can. Early, late, good, bad, indifference since not every creative artist run the “A” train all the time. So  I know that the Duke was crazy great when he had Ben and Johnny and the boys blowing stuff , maybe Ivy Anderson singing a low sway in the early 1940s when everybody needed a little something to get them through, a little sublime music to go with the rough slogging through sloppy roads. Needed too to blast off with some jitter-buggery on the dance floor when the liberty ships came in or the boys were on weekend passes. That is classic Duke.

I want to step back a minute though and go back to the beginning, Duke’s beginnings in the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age uptown Harlem Saturday night at the Cotton Club.  And as the album cover says (see above) playing “jungle music” for the Mayfair swells. Jungle music meaning not the great American indigenous music that jazz contributed to the world songbook but another variation of Mister’s taking his pleasures wherever he wanted, when he wanted and so Duke got clowned, there is no other way to put it. But all those Mayfair swells turned to sawdust before long and to clay whereas the Duke (and the boys, I know, I know) played the universe clean-out. Proof, laughing proof, listen to that famous “come-back” album composed of Duke standards that brought the house down, had the usually staid 1954 Newport Jazz Festival crowd up and dancing, and murmuring, no, moaning  for more. Yeah, that’s the high white note, brother, that is…. the hippety-hop hh…high white note.